Wednesday, April 23, 2014

Personally for me, I think Brad Marchand is a great hockey player that does his job well. I love watching people get all spun up about him. It's hilarious. Did he take a dive, I don't know, I wasn't on the ice. Did he draw a penalty yes. The fact remains, Marchand was the recipient of a questionable leg-on-leg check. That is a penalty, last time I checked the rule book. What's the on-ice official supposed to do, not give Brendan Smith a penalty?

Marchand on twitter crowd doubting legitimacy of his pain after collision w/Brendan Smith: "Thats why they're on twitter and I'm in the NHL"
— Joe Haggerty (@HackswithHaggs) April 23, 2014

Sunday, December 15, 2013

As most Boston Bruins fans know, there's a whole group of NHL fans that hate the Boston Bruins and go nuts no matter what the Boston Bruins do. It's the same thing being a member of the UND fan base as well. I heard about this little incident last night, as I was going home from the Engelstad Arena, after the game last night. I kind of figured some would be getting all spun up about this today.

OK, now that I've seen Marchand kissing his ring finger, I think I'm right -- he made the Cup-raising motion coming off the ice from warmup.
— Jason Brough (@JasonPHT) December 15, 2013

Monday, September 16, 2013

This is worth a read, you have to wonder what is going to happen to the players that wear the visor and get into a fight. Just for the record, the American Hockey League has a mandatory visor rule and the players seem to work their way around it. Junior leagues in the USA and Canada also have mandatory visor rules as well.

Joe Haggerty, CSNNE.COM -- One change about which at least one Bruins player feels very strongly is the adoption of the protective visor.

Starting this season, any player with less than 25 NHL games played will be forced to wear a protective visor, following the path of the protective helmet introduction where eventually every player will be donning a visor.

For a dyed-in-the-wool NHL enforcer like Shawn Thornton, there is no love for the visors and the hardship it will create for guys in his role.

“I don’t even know all the new rules yet. Nobody has explained them to me,” admitted Thornton. “What if a guy’s helmet is taken off during a fight? Are they going to stop the fight? I know he’s not allowed to take off his own helmet. I’m not looking forward to punching [a visor] when I’m throwing at somebody’s face. If I’m in the middle of a fight with a guy with a visor on, I’m getting his helmet off. That’s the first thing I’d be doing.

Friday, April 27, 2012

Boston Bruins goalie Tim Thomas has clarified his we/they statements that he made during the post game press conference. Personally, I think there are some in the Boston Media that are trying to make an issue out of Thomas' comments and looking further into them than they need to.

Thomas for his part clarified his “we/they” statements after Game 7 by saying he was using the word “they” to make sure his teammates were getting credit without him involving himself in the complimentary statements.

“It’s because I’m trying to give them credit without giving credit to myself. They deserve a huge amount of credit. Don’t read too much in the ‘they/us’ thing, please. What I’m trying to say is that this is a special group of guys in here. Whether we won the Cup last year or whether we failed this time. It’s a special group of guys that bodes well for the future of the Boston Bruins.” [Joe Haggerty, CSNNE]

Thursday, April 26, 2012

First off, if you cover hockey or watched it for more than a minute you will know that goalie are weird ducks. You have to be odd to stand in front of a rubber disk that is going 85-95 miles an hour. Like my buddies kid said once, there is no team in goalie but there is a big friggen "I"... In other words, goalies are basically in their own worlds and the game starts with and revolves around them. Think about it - a lot of times when things are going bad, goalies are the ones that the fans focus their attention on and a lot of times they get blamed when their favorite team's loses.

Of course there are some in the Boston Media that have hung on ever word that Tim Thomas has said this season, the Facebook posts brought some unneeded attention his way and you can tell by reading some of the articles in the Boston Media that there are some that want to run Timmy him out of town.

Then there were the references to the rest of the Bruins team as “they” at least five times during his postgame interview. If one were a conspiracy theorist it sounds like there is a clear separation of State and Tim Thomas going on.

"What it says about our guys is that they’re battlers and they’re still champions," he said. "They gave everything they had to the bitter end. Unfortunately this is sports and they fell short this time."

Thomas would not be the first professional athlete to feel the wrath in Boston, it's a tough city to play in for professional athletes if you catch the ire of the fans, just ask Bill Buckner and Bob Stanley of the 1986 Red Sox, it's not quite as bad as Montreal but it up there.

Thursday, February 09, 2012

I think it's funny that some in the Boston sports media want to make a big story about a post that Tim Thomas posted on his personal Facebook page. Sure he's an athlete in the public eye, but he's also an American citizen whose freedom of speech is protected under the first amendment.

If Thomas doesn't want to answer the questions the media people ask him, so be it. I guess the Joe Haggerty's of the world don't like it, but tough.

Personally, I don't have a problem with him making these types of comments in his spare time on his personal Facebook page. Lets just say that there are way more comments in favor of Tim's comments than there are against.

I guess Joe Haggerty doesn't seem to think that Tim Thomas is giving him enough time to answer his questions.